Pc Help Needed

[Evocare]

ookay, here goes..

Every 3 months or so I sit down and try to install XP SP2 on my PC which is running XP Home, I have never sucessfully managed this as once it installs it and my PC reboots It shuts down with system failure so i have to boot in safemode and goto a restore point, anyways this time i forgot to turn on system restore and i'm now unable to load XP Home, i have buggered it and now it wont load.

As i could not find my bootdisk i decided to install a copy of XP Pro i had (i had been meaning to do this for ages)

So i load the XP Pro disk and right away i'm asked to decide what drive to put this on, of which i was unsure, I could either overwrite my XPHome which is on my (C:) drive, or format the (D:) drive and install on there....hmmz

I expect i made a bad choice, but i decided install it on the (D:) drive and leave the (C:) with XP home on it alone, maybe i could retrive some of it one day.

All went ok and XP Pro was sucessfully installed on my (D:) drive and i proceeded to reinstal some programmes.

I was able to copy some files from my (C:) and transfer to my (D:), which was nice, but I want rid old old XP home now, and I don't know how to get rid of it, I tried right clicking my (C:) and selecting format, but once the format was 99.9% complete it said format was unsucessful, what a waste of an hour.

So I used the XP Pro disk to boot from, but I cant boot from it, its like it keeps overlooking the disk as a boot disk or something.

Another thing is that i want to do is transfer it all back to my (C:) once i've formated it, the only reason for this is my mate told me that my PC would be slower if my O/S is on my (D:) drive, is he chatting crap or is it true?

If it's nonsence then i don't mind leaveing it all on (D:).

Space is not much of a problem,i hardly use any, i have 320GB HDD (160gbx2) if that would make a difference.

So basiclly i need to Format my (C:) without useing a boot dick, or get my PC to recoginize the disk, and Transfer my O/S from my (D:) to the (C:) if its desireable to do so.

Haha, i should have wrote the sentance above instead of my life story with SP2, thanks for reading

Sorry this is a boring non footy post, but if any of you can offer some advise before i start changing my BIOS settings and making this worse i would be most greatful.

[cider head]

ookay, here goes..

Every 3 months or so I sit down and try to install XP SP2 on my PC which is running XP Home, I have never sucessfully managed this as once it installs it and my PC reboots It shuts down with system failure so i have to boot in safemode and goto a restore point, anyways this time i forgot to turn on system restore and i'm now unable to load XP Home, i have buggered it and now it wont load.

As i could not find my bootdisk i decided to install a copy of XP Pro i had (i had been meaning to do this for ages)

So i load the XP Pro disk and right away i'm asked to decide what drive to put this on, of which i was unsure,    I could either overwrite my XPHome which is on my (C:) drive, or format the (D:) drive and install on there....hmmz 

I expect i made a bad choice, but i decided install it on  the (D:) drive and leave the (C:) with XP home on it alone, maybe i could retrive some of it one day.

All went ok and XP Pro was sucessfully installed on my (D:) drive and i proceeded to reinstal some programmes.

I was able to copy some files from my (C:) and transfer to my (D:), which was nice, but I want rid old old XP home now, and I don't know how to get rid of it, I tried right clicking my (C:) and selecting format, but once the format was 99.9% complete it said format was unsucessful, what a waste of an hour.

So I used the XP Pro disk to boot from, but I cant boot from it, its like it keeps overlooking the disk as a boot disk or something.

Another thing is that i want to do is transfer it all back to my (C:) once i've formated it, the only reason for this is my mate told me that my PC would be slower if my O/S is on my (D:) drive, is he chatting crap or is it true?

If it's nonsence then i don't mind leaveing it all on (D:).

Space is not much of a problem,i hardly use any, i have 320GB HDD (160gbx2) if that would make a difference.

So basiclly i need to Format my (C:) without useing a boot dick, or get my PC to recoginize the disk,  and Transfer my O/S from my (D:) to the (C:) if its desireable to do so.

Haha, i should have wrote the sentance above instead of my life story with SP2, thanks for reading 

Sorry this is a boring non footy post, but if any of you can offer some advise before i start changing my BIOS settings and making this worse i would be most greatful.

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D: AND C: are only determined by the jumper settings...

I take it d: drive is another hard drive?

transfer all your wanted stuff to d: xp windows pro hard drive...

now the hard drive with windows xp pro on take out and put to one side.

put xp pro windows disc in the cd rom with your c: drive but set the first boot as cd rom, run set up and delete the partition and format drive but only let it

go as far as the format then switch the pc off

now get your windows xp pro hard drive and set the jumper to master

then set the hard drive jumper you formatted to slave

your d: should now load as c: and vise versa but with a empty hard drive and

the other with xp pro loading your windows as c: drive...

according to your pc motherboard you might have to run detect drives

in bios but most pc's auto detect them.

then just transfer your data, pictures etc back to d: being a storage drive

which shouldn't slow your pc down.

failing that start again, format both drives, load windows on on drive

and set jumpers master and slave.

hope this helps....

As for service packs, they won't load on boot leg windows xp discs but there is a way around that with a key changer program.

[Evocare]

Owe you a pint Cider head cheers.

Reckon i'm confident now in getting in sorted at last

[Guest]

Whoa, hold on a second.

You may find that your boot sector (the bit that determines which operating system loads) is on C:/ - delete that and nothing will happen!

Go into D:/ or maybe C:/ and in that root should be a file called 'boot.ini'

You will need to first goto tools -> folder options and untick show hidden files and also hide system files...

Open boot.ini in notepad

You should see something like:

[boot loader]

timeout=1

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin

Post it on here before you do anything else

[Evocare]

Is this what you mean Tom?

[boot loader]

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

I actually have 2 160gb drives, not one drive partitioned.

C drive has XP home (usless o/s)

D drive has XP Pro (the one i want to use)

I've not done owt yet as for the moment my PC is running faster than ever how it is, but i still want rid of the XP Home.

Cheers for help

[Guest]

Where did you find boot.ini

Was it in C:/?

[Evocare]

I'm not sure

I right clicked My Computer, went into properties, clicked on advanced went into startup and recovery settings, pressed edit start up option and it Auto copied that text to notepad.

I'm guessing its (D:) Drive becuase thats the drive XP Pro is on , which i'm useing now.

I'm pritty convinced that useing my (D:) drive is fine as my main drive, all i need to do is format the (C:) drive, which is where i'm stuck

[cider head]

I'm not sure 

I right clicked My Computer, went into properties, clicked on advanced went into startup and recovery settings, pressed edit start up option and it Auto copied that text to notepad.

I'm guessing its (D:) Drive becuase thats the drive XP Pro is on , which i'm useing now. 

I'm pritty convinced that useing my (D:) drive is fine as my main drive, all i need to do is format the (C:) drive, which is where i'm stuck

←

do it toms way if you want to keep the xp home...

if your happy with your xp pro hard drive and want it to run as c: like i said

just change the jumpers, your xp pro will run as c: if set to master and your

current c: will run as d: if set to slave, set the boot seqence in bios to boot

as hdd0..

also like i said if your not wanting your xp home on current c: just format

like i said in my first post, that drive you then set as a slave for storage

of pictures, music etc....

jumpers set the drive letters c: d: etc, c: is master.

take out xp pro hard drive put it to one side.. leave the xp home drive in and run

xp disc set up but set the boot sequence to boot from cd and let

the cd xp disc format the hard drive, but stop it as soon as formatting

has finnished, don't let the install xp run any further..

take that hard drive and set the jumper to slave and put your xp pro

hard drive back in with jumper set as master and set the boot sequence

in bios to boot as hdd0, your xp pro will boot as c: and your other

hard drive should be formatted.

[Evocare]

Done it!

I've sorted it out completly and i have have my O/S on my (C:) and the (D:) is clean and ready for storage.

I can't take all the credit, my mate helped me change the hardware settings etc as I would only screw things up, as i did before.

The images actually helped a lot, thanks for taking the bother to illustrated it.

Cheers to you both, my PC is running slick as, now i can forget about it and think about important things like football.

[cider head]

Done it!   

I've sorted it out completly and i have have my O/S on my (C:) and the (D:) is clean and ready for storage.

I can't take all the credit, my mate helped me change the hardware settings etc as I would only screw things up, as i did before. 

The images actually helped a lot, thanks for taking the bother to illustrated it. 

Cheers to you both, my PC is running slick as, now i can forget about it and think about important things like football.

←

No probs, good to see it worked out ok..